


Wires

by PenPatronusAooO



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers Family, Bromance, Epic Bromance, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Clint, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt Steve, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt Tony, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Male Friendship, Minor Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Not Iron Man 3 Compliant, Not Thor: The Dark World Compliant, Poisoning, Post-Avengers (2012), Protective Bruce Banner, Protective Steve Rogers, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-26 01:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6218767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenPatronusAooO/pseuds/PenPatronusAooO
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Chitauri are gone, but the battle isn't over. Tony's dying from radiation poisoning. Barton's dying from the scepter's effects. The NYPD wants to scapegoat them all, and Loki has a backup plan.</p><p>STORY COMPLETE!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wires

**Author's Note:**

> "You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you." -Steve  
> "I think I would just cut the wire." -Tony
> 
> Originally published on FanFiction.net.

Tony Stark hesitated before knocking on Erik Selvig's hospital room door. It didn't use to be so hard to fake a smile. Even in the weeks following his captivity in Afghanistan he pulled it off. But since the Chitauri attack, he found few reasons to, even around the Pepper. And soon, he knew, there would be more to rob him of contentment.

"Come in!" a meek voice called after Tony banged his forefinger on the wooden door. Beneath breathing tubes and electrodes, Dr. Selvig smiled when Stark walked to the foot of his bed. "Shouldn't you be at the courthouse?"

Tony looked at his watch and shrugged. "It can wait. They can't start the party without me."

"And by 'party' you mean 'angry mob.'"

"Most likely." Tony glanced at the beeping monitors scattered about the white room. "How are you feeling, Doc?"

Selvig's lips matched his white skin. "I don't think I'll make it to Coulson’s funeral tomorrow... In fact, I doubt I'll make it to TOMORROW tomorrow."

"They have no clue how to treat the seizures?"

"The physicians here? No. The physicians at S.H.I.E.L.D? No." Erik sighed. Speaking wore him out fast. "A Norwegian God used an alien scepter to rearrange my brain. Side effects were unavoidable." He tugged on a blanket near his waist. "How's the Hawk?"

"The same. Same symptoms. Only one seizure so far, though." Tony walked around the side of the bed and gently pulled the blanket up to Erik's chin. "Banner is working on him."

"Didn't you tell the police that Banner is in the Himalayas?"

Tony winked.

"Speaking of side effects, how are you feeling?"

"What do you mean" Tony folded his arms against his chest.

Selvig's eyes narrowed. "Don't play dumb, Stark."

"I hosed down the minute I returned to Stark Tower. I'm not radioactive."

"Anymore." Erik shook his head. "You should get a CAT scan, at least."

Tony shrugged. "What do you want me to say, Doc.? I feel perfectly fine."

"You're lying," said Selvig, "but I don't have the energy to argue."

Tony didn't deny anything. "I'll let you get some rest."

"Good luck today."

Tony gave a lazy salute. "Thanks, I'll need it."

Erik's face drooped. For the first time he looked as sick as he felt. "Goodbye, Tony."

Tony didn't like that word. He nodded and left.

\---------

The sun set on a New York evening three days after the attack. What was left of the Avengers holed up in a bomb shelter beneath Stark Tower. The authorities, S.H.I.E.L.D. and the media thought they were all long gone. Hawkeye and the Black Widow, hypothetically on another mission, most likely dyed their hair, changed their names and blended into a low-profile government office. Captain Steve Rogers most likely set off to track down long-lost relatives and friends and, meanwhile, Tony Stark and Pepper Potts spent most of their time at heated press conferences and long court sessions. The NYPD slapped an ankle cuff on Tony the second he entered court.

That evening Captain Steve Rogers lay on Tony Stark's couch with a weathered copy of ‘Lord of the Flies’ up to his nose. Dr. Bruce Banner sat on a barstool in front of a gurney on Cap's left. He stared, rarely blinking, at Loki's dead scepter. Every half hour or so he stood up and opened his mouth so wide that Steve expected a jubilant "eureka!" or a bellowed "dammit!" But, each time, Bruce's face fell. He sat back on the stool, rubbed his eyes and sighed. The two extra-large pizzas JARVIS delivered for dinner sat unopened on a leather lazy-boy.

Steve finished chapter six right before Natasha yelled. He dropped the book, leapt over the couch and sprinted across the cement floor to the other side of the room. Clint Barton lay unconscious in a bed in a makeshift infirmary wearing nothing but boxers. His face was paler than the white wall beside him. His back arched and his joints stiffened and a dark red drop of blood limped from his nose to his upper lip.

"Don’t let him hurt himself!" Natasha ordered Steve. She kept a grip on Barton's shoulders to keep him from rolling off the bed. "Bruce, he's having another seizure!"

Banner appeared beside them with a syringe as long as his hand. He emptied the entire contents into Clint's neck with one quick thrust. "Steve, hand me that stethoscope." Rogers plucked it off an instrument tray and put it in Bruce's hands. "Dammit," Bruce whispered after he listened to Clint's pulse and respiration. "His heart is beating faster than a rabbit's."

A soft cry preceded one last convulsion, and then Clint went still. Natasha wiped her short red hair out of her face and cupped his cheeks with her petite hands. "His fever's worse, too." She looked at Bruce with wide eyes and whispered, "How much time do you think he has?"

Bruce looked at Steve and saw the same question in his eyes. "I, uh…" Bruce cleared his throat and folded his arms against his chest. "I've learned as much as I can from the scepter. Without the Cube to power it I can't begin to understand what it did to Barton's body and mind. There is one experiment I want to try but, uh, I'll need Tony's help with it. But, listen, I'm sure by now Erik Selvig's doctors have figured out something –"

"Selvig is dead," said a new voice that echoed in the narrow room. Steve, Natasha and Bruce pivoted to see Tony Stark exiting the elevator. He wore a simple black suit and tie, and twirled the disabled ankle cuff around his forefinger. "He died an hour ago."

Steve stood up straight and raised his chin. "What happened?" he asked.

Tony tossed the cuff onto the couch. "All I know is he had another seizure. The docs had no clue how to treat him. Barton has the same symptoms, so it must have something to do with that damn scepter." Tony joined their half-circle around Clint. "How's Legolas doing?" he asked.

Natasha looked fragile in her civilian clothes: dark jeans, red t-shirt, black boots. She didn't reply, just briefly stroked Clint's cheek.

Tony shared a look with Bruce, and then Steve, who kept his gaze for a long moment. Tony's nose wrinkled – briefly – and he turned on his heel toward a cabinet beside the elevator. He returned with a bottle of clear liquid and four shot glasses. He poured silently, passed the shots silently, raised his own glass silently. "To Dr. Selvig," he said, "and Phil Coulson." The four Avengers clinked their glasses together in the center of their small circle, then downed the shot.

A minute passed and then Bruce asked, "How did the court session go today?"

Tony took their glasses and walked over to a sink. He kept his back turned as he said, "Pepper and JARVIS are packing up a couple SUVs with supplies. You all need to leave tonight. Right now."

"What?" Bruce and Steve gasped.

"Why?" Natasha asked.

Tony ran the water. "I'll give you plenty of supplies: food, weapons, medical. Meet up with S.H.I.E.L.D. if you feel safe, but stay out of sight."

"Stark," Steve snapped, "what's going on?"

Tony stopped washing the glasses. He turned off the faucet and leaned heavily against the sink.

Steve's face and voice softened. He put his hand on the back of Stark's shoulder. "Tony?"

"The FBI got a warrant to search and seize everything I own," Tony said low and deep in his throat. "You have to get out of here or they'll find you. First thing tomorrow they're taking me to County."

Steve frowned. "Jail? How can they – they can't…"

"They're making him the scapegoat," Bruce explained. "New York was attacked by aliens. Hundreds of people died and the culprit is on another planet. They need someone to blame."

"That's not fair," Steve growled. He looked at Natasha for confirmation.

She mirrored his concern, his frustration. Every line on her face tightened. Her fingers were splayed, unmoving, across Clint's pale face. "Tony," she said with a hint of her usual granite, "the company, your inventions…"

"Pepper will take over. We already discussed it. She has legal power."

"But after Loki… Stark, we still don't know who helped him, who gave him the scepter in the first place. This might not be over."

"It is for me." Tony whirled around and met their furrowed brows with an iron expression. "And maybe if they have me in custody then they won't go after any of you."

"You're no good to us behind bars."

"I'm…" Tony met Steve's eyes and held them. "I'm making the sacrifice play."

The muscles around Steve's jaw vibrated. "Tony, we need you."

"Weren't you the one lecturing me about lying down on the wire? That's what I'm doing, Steve."

Rogers took another step closer, right into Tony's personal space. "You laid down on the wire when you carried that nuke into space. You don't have anything to prove." Steve put his left hand on Tony's right shoulder, and his right on Tony's left. "We're a team now. Let's cut this wire, Tony. Together."

Tony shrugged Steve's hands away. He started to speak but, suddenly, his face turned white. His eyelids drooped, then snapped open. Alarmed, Bruce called, "Tony?" Stark looked up at the sound of his name, but his eyes squinted as if he couldn't see straight. He didn't even realize that he'd begun to teeter to the left.

"Steve he's passing out!" Natasha warned.

"Tony-" Steve grabbed Tony before he completely lost his footing, and pulled his arm across his shoulders. "Banner!"

Bruce grabbed Tony's other arm and the two Avengers guided him over to the couch. They sat down on either side of him while Natasha scurried over with a bottle of water. Tony didn't put up a fight but allowed the guys to hold him steady while Natasha helped him drink. He took a deep breath and leaned back, limp, into the cushions.

"Tony, what the hell was that?" Bruce demanded.

"Nothing," Tony whispered. "Long day in court… I'm just tired. I feel fine."

"He's lying," Natasha diagnosed.

"I'll be fine in a minute."

"Still lying."

"Tony, why haven't these started to heal?" Bruce used the soft pad of his thumb to press gently on the untouched skin above a cut on Tony's forehead – a cut from his encounter with Loki three days before. The second his skin touched Tony's, Bruce recoiled from shock. "Oh my god…"

"What?" Steve asked. "What's going on?"

Bruce's voice shifted from stern to defeated. "Tony, why didn't you tell us?"

Tony's white lips barely moved when he spoke. "I rinsed in a radiation lab. I scanned myself. I took precautions. I'm not irradiated anymore."

"That's not what I mean." A Hulk-like growl rose from Bruce's chest. "If you told me – if I knew – maybe there's still time. I can help you, Tony."

Tony shook his head slightly. For a moment, as he stared up at his friends, his eyes became wet before they returned to neutral once more. "There's nothing you can do. I'm already dead."

Steve gripped a cushion so hard that stuffing leaked from the seams. "Dammit, Banner, what's going on?"

"Radiation…" Natasha whispered. "The nuke…"

"Tony was too close to the nuke when it went off. The suit couldn't protect him from the radiation. Especially in the vacuum of space there was nothing to slow it down." Banner nodded at Tony. "He has radiation poisoning. That's why he doesn't care that he's going to jail."

"A lethal dose?" Steve murmured.

Bruce's eyes dropped to his lap. "He might have a couple days. Seventy-two hours, if he's lucky."

"Like I said," Tony whispered, "lying on the wire, Cap. Lying on the wire."

\---------

The pair of SUVs reached Sioux Falls, South Dakota, after driving for 21 hours straight. It was 3AM, give or take a time zone. Natasha couldn't remember if time went backwards or forwards as they went west. Either way time was running out for Clint and Stark.

While Barton and Tony slept in the truck, Tasha stood guard outside. They parked in the dark and deserted lot of a local park and waited for Banner and Rogers to meet up with them. The Black Widow allowed herself a rare grin when the boys returned. She doubted that the local restaurants were still open so early in the morning, which meant that Captain America, all-star true-blue boy scout, stole all of that shawarma.

"I was getting worried," Tasha said as Steve handed her a plastic spoon and a Styrofoam carton.

"We had to hide under a hospital bed for an hour," Bruce explained, "but we got what we came for." Banner jogged around the SUV and opened the front passenger-side door. Tony Stark lay flat in the seat with his seatbelt still buckled. His skin looked ashen and red, dime-sized lesions dotted his neck and arms. "Tony. Hey." Bruce gently tapped his friend's cheek with the palm of his hand. "Tony, you have to eat something. And I need to give you a shot."

Bleary brown eyes blinked. "What?" Tony muttered.

"Come on, sit up." Bruce yanked the lever beneath the seat and pulled it into an upright position. "Wake up, Tony. Roll your sleeve up."

Tony obeyed. He was too exhausted for his usual wisecracks. Bruce stabbed three syringes into three different vials, and then cleaned the soft skin of Tony's forearm. "You got a stimulant?"

Bruce emptied the first vial into Tony's body. "And adrenaline, and vitamin B12. Should keep you on your feet."

Tony licked his chapped lips. "Legolas needs that more than me."

"No, we have to speed your heart up and slow his down." Bruce injected the second medication. "Have you had a chance to consider my idea?"

Tony's left eyebrow stretched up. "Of course. I did the math in my sleep." He winced at the third needle and spoke again only when it was out of his arm. "You don't need a power source as strong as the Tesseract to activate Loki's scepter. The arc reactor can definitely do it." Tony tapped the circle of light on his chest. "We just need the equipment to hook me up to it, and I'm your human battery. A far more portable one when this radiation kills me."

Bruce's nostrils flared. "I'm not going to let you die. Either of you."

Tony looked at his friend almost as if he felt pity for him. "You can't catch me this time, Big Guy."

"I can at least slow you down until we find something that can."

Tony sat up straighter. He changed the subject. "Is that shawarma I smell?"

Bruce helped Tony unbuckle himself and stand up. "Steve thought you'd prefer that to whatever we found in the vending machines at the hospital." Banner chuckled at the look on Stark's face. "You're not used to people going out of their way to help you, huh, Tony."

"If they're on my payroll or need something from me, sure. I've never really had…"

"Friends?"

"No, teammates." Tony didn't notice Bruce's wince. He let Banner lead him to the open trunk where Steve and Natasha sat eating from their containers. "Captain, Agent Romanoff. Haven't said 'hi' since Indiana. How much further?"

Natasha used her fork to point at a map of the United States at her feet. "The military base is about thirty miles north of Cheyenne. It's been abandoned for years, but Clint and I have camped out there when we got desperate. I hid some emergency supplies inside. Nine-hour drive. Eight and a half if we hurry."

Steve glanced at Clint who lay, sprawled out, across the back row of seats in the SUV, squeezed into Tony's old clothes with his head cushioned by a bath towel. "I think we better hurry."

"Shh!" Natasha suddenly hissed. "Steve… do you hear that?"

"Hear what—" Steve began. A thrumming sound came from behind him. He strained his ears, concentrating. Tree branches and blades of grass swayed in a sudden breeze. Steve dumped his food. "Banner, I'll help Tony. You two start the trucks."

"Think someone at that hospital recognized you?" Natasha wondered as she dug keys out of her pocket. The breeze turned into wind, the wind into gusts. The thrumming sound vibrated their skin.

"We can wonder about that later. For now, let's get out of here!" Steve led Tony into the second row of seats of the first SUV, then jumped into the passenger seat beside Banner in the second. Natasha, with Tony and Clint, did a 180 in the lot and led the way out of the park. Banner floored it behind her. They kept their headlights off, but it was already too late. The Avengers had been found.

The black helicopter emerged from the tree line like lava from a volcano. A pair of spotlights landed on the SUVs and didn't lose them even when they merged and headed towards the city limits. Tony's cell phone chimed. He hit speaker and held it up to Natasha's ear. "What the hell!" Bruce hollered. "Natasha, we're sitting ducks on the highway!"

Natasha coaxed the truck up to 90 mph and swerved around a pink Mustang. "That helicopter is standard issue FBI," she explained. "They won't fire on us with civilians around."

In the other car, Steve and Bruce exchanged glances. "Are you sure? That machine is unmarked. Are you sure it's not S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

"Oh my God…" Stark suddenly gasped.

"What?" said Steve, Banner and Romanoff.

Tony stared at the rear-view mirror. "Banner, hit the brakes now. Now!"

Bruce obeyed, and the helicopter's first missile hit the pavement between the two trucks. Banner growled as he yanked the steering wheel to the left, barely avoiding the new crater in the middle of the highway. The second missile collapsed a bridge fifty yards in front of them. Quick reflexes and even quicker maneuvers got Natasha past the falling rocks, but Bruce was forced to stop. Tires squealed, rubber burned. The SUV's momentum was too great and it rolled, ending up on its side, passenger doors down, halfway into the pile of debris. All Natasha and Tony saw in the mirrors was the helicopter bearing down on a plume of white smoke.

Natasha parked in the center lane. "Suit up, Stark. Get Clint out of here." She took out her gun and opened the door.

A hand clasped her shoulder. "Wait," Tony gasped. "Just wait."

"They'll kill them!" Natasha snapped. "Stark, they'll kill them!"

A deafening roar preceded a brief earthquake. Shades of green became visible through the dissipating smoke. A figure ten times the size of a gorilla and a thousand times stronger climbed to the top of the bridge's remains with a crumpled SUV in his hands. Like a child throwing rocks at a bird, the Hulk catapulted the truck at the helicopter, sending it crashing down and out of sight beyond a dark neighborhood. The Hulk disappeared again into the smoke, and then reappeared with an apparently unconscious Captain America over his left shoulder.

"Shit," Tony cursed. He summoned his strength and followed Natasha out of the truck. "Put your gun down, Romanoff!"

Tasha lowered her weapon but didn't holster it. The two Avengers stood still, side by side, and watched the Hulk amble over to them. He sniffed, grunted, and then dumped Steve at their feet. Cap landed spread-eagled on his back, his jeans and black t-shirt ripped, knuckles and right shoulder bleeding. Tasha knelt beside him and checked his vitals. "He's all right," she reported to Tony, "just knocked out."

Stark stepped past them and approached the Hulk. "Nice going, Big Guy. You saved the day again."

The Hulk knocked his left fist into the pavement. "Tone…" he growled, "Tone-y."

Stark held his palms up as he got closer. "That's right," he soothed as if talking to an excited dog. "It's me, Tony, your—"

"Team…" Hulk said. He pointed at his green chest, then at Tony's glowing one. "Teammate."

"That's right." Tony lowered his hands, blinked twice, stared. "Friend," he clarified, "I'm your friend." Those were the magic words. The Hulk's muscles deflated and his spine shrunk. White-tan-pink skin replaced the emerald. Bones popped, eyes calmed and a moment later, a naked Bruce Banner collapsed to his knees, gasping. Tony grinned. "There he is."

\---------

Clint Barton squinted at the yellowed paper Natasha found taped to the abandoned facility's door. He read it aloud for the rest of the Avengers to hear and as he spoke, he realized that he recognized the handwriting.

“Hello Naomi and Carl,”

“I told you once that I could track you wherever you go, but you didn't believe me. It's a good thing we've never been on opposite sides. You're good with a spatula, Robin and you're good with a knife, Wolf Spider, but I would win because of reasons you don't have security clearance for… yet.”

"Time out." Tony Stark sat in the SUV's center row with his head resting against Steve's rolled up jacket. "Who the hell are Naomi and Carl?"

"Us," Clint and Natasha said at the same time. "We have a dozen aliases," she explained, "including 'Robin' and 'Wolf Spider.'"

Tony rolled his eyes.

"Good with a spatula?" Steve quoted. He stood outside the car with Bruce and Natasha on either side.

"That's code for bow and arrow," said Hawkeye.

"What's 'knife' code for?" asked Bruce.

"A knife." The Black Widow gave him a smug smile. "Keep reading, Clint."

Barton sat up straighter so that he could breathe easier. "When I see you next month I'll pretend that you won the bet, lie and say that I wasn't able to find you in this hide-and-seek game of ours. I'll even buy you steak dinner like I promised. But the next time you retreat back here and read this note, you'll know who the real champion is. You owe me lobster.

Sincerely,

Perry

P.S. Find the last doorknob and turn it 189.76 degrees to the left.”

Clint gently brushed a layer of dust off the bottom half of the paper, carefully folded it and handed it back to Natasha. "Coulson?"

She nodded and pocketed the letter. "Coulson. I haven't been here in eight months – you?"

"Not since Fury leashed me to the Tesseract."

Natasha patted the back of Steve's forearm and said to Bruce, "You two come with me. Let's see what presents Agent Coulson left us."

Steve and Bruce raised their eyebrows at the back of Natasha's head as she walked toward the building. They didn't argue or ask questions yet. They were on S.H.I.E.L.D. turf, in the Black Widow's hands. They followed.

The facility wasn't fancy. What it was was minimalistic and gutted from top to bottom so thoroughly that they couldn't tell if it once belonged to the CIA, the Air Force or a zoo for all they knew. Like an iceberg, most of it was underneath the top layer, which was little more than a rectangular brick building the size of a one-room schoolhouse. "Last doorknob…" Natasha muttered when they entered the dark room. "Last doorknob is the first drawer…" She turned left and dashed over to a dusty wooden desk in the corner. Inside the deep top drawer she found three books. Steve and Bruce joined her and watched her select the book furthest to the left. Inside that was a keypad with glowing Roman numerals. "18976," she whispered, and typed in the code.

A rush of wind behind them revealed a sliding trap door in the center of the dirty floor. Lights flickered, then shone, revealing an iron spiral staircase with a tiny sticker of a cartoon lobster on the stop step. "Nice," said Natasha. She peeked down the stairs and her smile widened even more. "Thanks, Phil."

Half an hour later the Avengers assembled all of their gear and supplies in the fresh, whitewashed underground lab. The equipment was just as good as the Helicarrier’s. It was stocked with enough food, medical supplies and power to last months. Bruce wasted no time with his idea to help Barton. He had to activate Loki's scepter and use the arc reactor to jump-start it. Understanding the scepter's abilities was the key to understanding what it did to Barton's body.

With Steve's help, Bruce set Tony up on a table in a corner of the room with cables leading from the reactor in his chest to the scepter. Programming the computers to take readings on devices they knew nothing about took time but by late afternoon, Bruce was ready. "Stand back," he ordered Steve, who retreated to the opposite corner where Clint and Natasha sat. "Ready, Tony?"

Stark gave them a thumb’s up and then closed his eyes.

"Here we go," Bruce whispered. He hit a button, completing the last circuit.

It was anti-climactic, at first. Every light in the room flickered with the intensity of a dying firefly. They turned off, briefly, then suddenly shone ten times as bright. Sparks erupted from Tony's chest. He yelped. His back arched up off the table. The scepter filled with blue lightning, pulsed, then shot out sparks of its own. A hum started at a low pitch and rose to a dog whistle. Stark screamed and banged his fists on the table.

"Tony!" Steve called. "Banner, abort it!"

"No, wait!" Tony yelled. He pointed at Bruce and shouted through clenched teeth, "Give it time – give it another minute!"

Bruce reluctantly took his finger off the button. The scent reached him, then. Undefinable at first, but then he saw a thin plume of smoke rise from Tony's skin. "Tony – Tony!" Stark didn't answer. His arm flopped to the table, his eyes rolled back into his skull and he went quiet.

"Abort!" Clint barked.

Bruce didn't hesitate again. He broke the connection between the reactor and the scepter, then rushed to the table. Though he'd been behind Banner, Steve reached Tony first. An ominous déjà vu triggered all of their memories when Steve asked, "Is he breathing?" and pressed his ear to Tony's lips.

Bruce's hands shook. "I – I think so. Get him comfortable. I'll get another injection." Steve ripped the cables out of the arc reactor and picked Tony up in a fireman's carry. Tasha helped Clint scoot off the only mattress in the building to make room.

"This shouldn't have hurt him." Bruce stuttered through his words and stumbled around the room looking for his medicine bag. He found it but Natasha stole it away. His fingers were shaking too hard to fill the syringe properly. "This shouldn't have happened!"

"Well it did!" Steve snapped. He rotated Stark's head so that Tasha could get a good angle at his neck. "Dammit, Banner! He's already weak – you're lucky that didn't kill him!"

"I…" Bruce ran his fingers through his hair and backed away. His thigh bumped against the table with the scepter.

Steve took a deep, calming breath. "I'm sorry, Doc. I'm sorry – look, I –" Steve looked over his shoulder and froze. "Dr. Banner?"

For the second time in a week, Bruce Banner stared down at his own hand as if it had detached. He'd grabbed the scepter, but didn't know why. "…the Hell?" he gasped.

Natasha slowly stood and stepped towards him. "It's like you're drawn to it. When you get upset and your guard is down."

"But why?" Steve wondered.

"Gamma radiation." Clint said the words so softly that the others almost missed them. "Gamma radiation created the Hulk, right? And the Tesseract and the scepter emit Gamma radiation." Clint intertwined his fingers, miming two puzzle pieces fitting together. "The S.H.I.E.L.D. docs found traces of Gamma on both Dr. Selvig and I…"

"And…?" Steve prompted.

"I don't know." Clint shrugged. "I'm not the scientist here. I just point out patterns."

Bruce set the scepter back on the table, then sat on the corner of the mattress beside Tony. "That thing was burning him," he said. "Why did Tony tell me to give it more time? He must have seen that the scepter was on. It was hurting him… why didn't he want to stop?"

Steve crossed his arms and held them tight against his chest. "This Gamma radiation, what else can you use it for? What can it do?"

"It's used all the time in the medical field." Banner plucked his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. "Like… like in cancer research. They're experimenting with using it to kill cancer cells."

"I thought radiation poisons people?" Steve gestured to the unconscious Iron Man.

"Well, yes, in high doses. In some particular doses it can heal—" The realization shocked Bruce so hard that he dropped his glasses, shattering them on the tiled floor. "Oh my god…"

"What?" said Steve, Clint and Natasha.

"Son of a bitch cured himself." Bruce looked down at his unconscious friend. "You are a genius."

It was then – right at the end of Banner's sentence – that a demigod crashed through the ceiling.

\---------

Loki looked just as surprised to see the Avengers as they were to see him.  
The Asgardian landed flat on his back with a spoon clutched in his hand. Apparently he'd been interrupted in the middle of breakfast. His clothes were the same, just cleaner. The arrogance on his face was replaced by confusion, the confidence by panic. Dust and debris rained down from the hole he made in the ceiling. For half a moment they just stared at each other, none of them believing their own eyes. Then Loki noticed the scepter on the table above him. "Brilliant," he said. A second later he was on his feet, his arm wrapped around Natasha's neck and the scepter in his grip. Steve bent his knees to charge him but froze when Loki pointed the scepter at Tasha's head.

Clint turned a shade paler as he fought his way to his feet. "Loki, you son of a bitch, don't you dare hurt her."

"How the hell did you get here?" Bruce demanded. He stayed seated but adjusted his position so that his body was between Loki and Tony. "How did you escape Asgard?"

Loki's green eyes looked bright beneath the fluorescent lights. "Oh, gentlemen," he said through short, gasping breaths, "it's truly a pleasure to see you again. I didn't give you enough credit. I thought it would take longer for you to activate my scepter without the Tesseract."

"You expected us to?" Steve asked.

The Black Widow struggled and Loki tightened his grip on her. "A contingency plan. My 'associates' programmed it into the scepter in the highly unlikely scenario I didn't succeed in conquering this pathetic planet. If the scepter is reactivated by anyone but me, it automatically transports me to it from wherever I am in the universe. A sincere thank you to whoever made this reunion possible."

Three pairs of eyes glared daggers at him.

"Now, I should run along before my ex-brother comes looking for me." Loki used Natasha as a human shield and sidestepped to the staircase. "Don't follow me. If you try, all you'll find is her dead body." Loki walked backwards up the stairs while keeping Natasha between him and the boys.

Right before she was out of earshot, Tasha called out, "Clint – just like Budapest!" She choked, presumably from Loki's grip. A minute later they heard the SUV pull away at full speed.

Barton slid down the wall until he collapsed to his knees. He pinched the bridge of his nose furiously. "Take it easy." Steve crouched in front of him with sorry eyes. "Sit still before you have another seizure."

Bruce remembered Coulson's letter. "Was that code, too?" he asked. "What Natasha said… What did she mean?"

"It's more like an inside joke," Clint whispered. "One that's not funny. It's a long story, what happened in Budapest. What she said… I think she meant that she wants us to go after Loki even if it'll get her killed."

"That's what you did in Budapest?" Steve murmured. "You went after her?"

Barton rested his head on the wall behind him. "She came after me," he whispered.

"You survived. She didn't get you killed."

Clint shut his eyes. "I don't remember much. I wouldn't, considering I was legally dead for three and a half minutes." He let his head fall to the side as exhaustion overtook him. "You have to find her, Cap… Consider it a last request…"

Steve watched helplessly as his teammate slipped back into unconsciousness. He looked at Tony, then Barton, then back again. "Now what do we do?" he asked the quiet room.

Bruce stumbled over to the computer terminals and started sorting through the data recorded from the scepter. Barely three keystrokes in and he cursed and kicked the table. Steve asked what was wrong but Bruce didn't respond at first. Ninety percent of his focus was on suppressing the Hulk. When the green blush on his cheeks faded, Bruce took a deep breath and said to Steve, "This is useless. Loki's entrance damaged the only computer we have that's capable of analyzing this. The little data we got is so complicated it would take Tony Stark six lifetimes to unravel it."

Steve's cheeks turned as red as Bruce's had been green. "So there's nothing more we can do. Barton's as good as dead."

The sudden lightning flashed so brightly through the hole in the ceiling that both Steve and Bruce had to shade their eyes. No thunder followed. 

The GOD of thunder did.

Thor dropped into the room with his hammer in one hand and the Tesseract in the other. He marched over to Barton without a word. In a seemingly effortless motion, Thor picked Clint up and tossed him over his shoulder. Still without speaking, he raised his hammer towards the sky and disappeared back the way he came. The air cleared, the dust settled. Bruce and Steve stared at each other with bulging eyes. Both men took deep breaths and began to shout at each other, at Thor, at the missing Loki and the unconscious Stark, at the moon and the stars and everything else. Before they ran out of breath, though, Thor returned. Again he landed in the center of the room. Barton wasn't with him. He pocketed the Tesseract and dropped his hammer.

"Dr. Banner," the god greeted, "Captain Rogers, my friends. Forgive me, but I heard your words while I traveled here. I assure you that Barton is in good hands. The Asgard healers will take good care of him. Now – where's Loki?"

Twenty minutes later, after Steve and Bruce had updated Thor on everything he'd missed, Tony started to stir. Before he was conscious, his fingers scratched at the fading red lesions on his skin. Bruce noticed that Tony's color had improved, and his skin didn't feel so hot. His exposure to the Gamma radiation might just have knocked out the cancer caused by the nuke. If it didn't then Thor would have to take another patient back to Asgard.

"Pepper?" Stark whispered. Another minute passed before he opened his eyes. Immediately Steve held a bottle of water to his lips, and Tony sipped. While Bruce checked his vitals, Tony's focus shifted to Thor. "Hey, blondie…" he said with a slur. "If you're here, does that mean… Does that mean…" Tony licked his lips and struggled to organize his thoughts. "You tell Loki he can't have any of my booze."

Another twenty minutes. The others updated Tony and got him on his feet. Stark was woozy still, but seemed stronger. He moved like a drunk instead of a dead man. The lesions turned pink. Tony was healing, fast. Bruce confirmed that his vitals were strong. To be safe, just in case another god dropped in, Tony put on the Iron Man suit. Even if he passed out again it would keep him upright. The four men looked over the remaining supplies, ate their fill of the rations and, finally, circled up around the single working computer to come up with a plan.

When they were interrupted for a third time, it wasn't another Asgardian. They heard the telltale thrum of a helicopter and by the time they got their belongings and climbed to the top of the stairs, another three copters joined the first. Spotlights shone down into the building. Soldiers dressed in armor as black as the helicopters rappelled down thick ropes with guns in their hands and grenades on their belts. They circled the building in moments.

"Oh my god," said Steve. Thor, Banner, Stark and Rogers stood back to back at the top of the spiral staircase. "That's what I saw. Their armor, their guns. That's the same stuff I found hidden on the Helicarrier."

"S.H.I.E.L.D.'s phase two," Tony growled. The Iron Man mask snapped down into place.

"I don't think so." Bruce's shoulders slumped and it took a lot of strength to point. "Look, they have patches on their shoulders. WSC."

Thor twirled his hammer in his hand. "WSC?"

"World Security Council," said Steve.

"The Council," said Tony. "Fury's superiors. Fury's superiors who tried to drop a nuclear bomb on Midtown."

Thor's frown took up his entire face. "Are they not our allies?"

"They blame us for what happened in New York. Not our biggest fans."  
Banner risked glancing at the others over his shoulder. "What do we do?" he asked. "Steve…?"

Captain America lifted his shield and squared his jaw. "We don't have time for this. We have to find Loki and Agent Romanoff. That's our priority." Steve took a deep breath. He bent his knees. "Ready to smash, Banner?"

The others didn't see Bruce roll his eyes. He answered Cap's question by charging out the front door.

\---------

The World Security Council's soldiers were covered in their black uniforms from boots to visors, except for one man in the center. He stood twenty feet from the facility's front door, directly beneath the helicopter's spotlight – arms folded against his chest, gray tailored suit and tie whipping in the wind, face expressionless. "You missed my funeral," Phil Coulson told the Avengers.

Cap's shield fell to his side, Banner froze in mid-transformation, Thor's hammer slipped out of his grip and Tony took three steps backwards. It was Tony, though, who recovered first a minute later. He flipped up his visor, took six steps forward and said, "Phil?"

Coulson pocketed his sunglasses and half-smiled. "I thought my first name was 'Agent'?"

"Fury said…" Tony cleared his throat and raised his voice so that he could be heard easier over the helicopter's propeller. "Fury said you were dead."

Phil shrugged. "S.H.I.E.L.D. has excellent health insurance. Not even Obama-care covers resurrecting nano-cells. Of course, I'm part machine now, so I might rust in the rain, but I'm alive."

Tony shook his head in disbelief. He moved closer to Phil but, suddenly, Steve grasped his elbow. The captain wedged his shield between Tony's chest and the two dozen soldiers still pointing their guns at the Avengers.

"I don't understand anything you just said, Agent Coulson," Steve said. "I'm happy to see you alive, but what are you doing here?"

Coulson's face remained neutral as he said, with slight sarcasm, "I'm here to help, Captain Rogers. I'm here to take you in before the bad guys find you."

"Take us where?" Bruce asked. "To Fury?"

Phil's head cocked quickly to the right at an exact thirty-degree angle. "The Council, Dr. Banner, would like a word with you."

"And by 'a word' you mean…"

His head cocked to the left. "I think these guns are communicating our message quite clearly, Doctor." Phil turned back to Steve. "Where's Barton?"

Cap didn't blink. "He's dead. Like Selvig. And Loki took Agent Romanoff," Rogers told him. "Help us rescue her, then we'll talk."

Lightning-fast, Coulson unsheathed his own sidearm and pointed it at Cap's head. "No more talk," he stated. "Come with us. Come quietly."

Tony's face dropped. He didn't bother to hide his wounded expression. "What the hell, Coulson?"

Thor slowly raised his hammer and aimed it at Coulson. "I do not understand why you are alive or why you insist on threatening us, but I will not talk while Loki is—" A blast of light suddenly erupted from Thor's cloak. He smelled the burning before he felt the heat. With a very un-god-like yelp, Thor swatted the burning Tesseract out of his pocket and onto the ground. The Avengers' wide eyes slowly rotated back to Coulson's twisted smirk.

"We had a lot of time to study the Tesseract," the agent said. "Or, I should say, our nano-cells did when Fury wasn't looking. Enough time to learn, for instance, how to trigger its energy in short bursts." Coulson pointed at his own forehead. "The technology in my head can trigger the Tesseract. I can kill you four with a thought."

"Well, when you put it that way…" Banner raised his hands in surrender. Stark and Rogers exchanged glances and then followed suite. Thor reluctantly allowed a nearby soldier to pick up the Tesseract and then, with equal reluctance, handed over his weapon. They all held still as the soldiers closed in. Coulson snapped his fingers and the helicopter landed. With the butts of dozens of guns against their backs, the Avengers marched.

When Tony was so close to the helicopter that the propeller's beats blocked out everything but the sound of his own breathing, his com system crackled with static.

"Mr. Stark," Coulson's voice spoke in his ear. "Tony, I need your help."

Tony glanced back over his shoulder and spotted Phil standing at the back of the line of soldiers. His expression was stone.

But his eyes were wet.

"They're controlling me, Tony. The Council is controlling me with the nano-cells they used to save my life. Sometimes I can access the technology, but you're the only one who can disable them without killing me—" Coulson winced and massaged his forehead. "I can only fight this a second more, Tony. When the helicopter takes off, I'm going to release a toxic gas through the ventilation system. It will knock everyone in the cargo hold unconscious in under a minute. You'll be protected in the suit. Take out the pilot and fly us to—"

Another crackle. Coulson's voice didn't resume. When Tony sat between Rogers and Banner on a bench in the cargo hold, he muttered, "I don't know how to fly a damn helicopter!"

\---------

Natasha stared at her reflection in the SUV's passenger-side window. With white fingers she probed the skin beneath her eyes, the space between the lids and the brows, and the wrinkling corners. Her eyes were a dazzling, crystal-blue. The exact color Clint's eyes were when he was under Loki's control. The Norse god pricked her chest with the scepter precisely as he had with Clint, with Dr. Selvig, with his other victims. Light – energy – power entered her heart and mind. She expected to feel what Clint described: unmade. Undone. She expected to become her own prison bars.

Didn't happen. She remained herself. Apparently, immune.

Maybe it didn't work on her because she knew what to expect and, therefore, how to fight it. Maybe the scepter wasn't operating correctly. Perhaps Loki was out of practice. It definitely wasn't because she had an arc reactor guarding her heart. A small portion of Natasha considered the possibility that the alien power didn't unmake her because she was strong. Even stronger than Clint Barton. Too strong for anything – anything – to ever unmake her again. She stared at the mirror and asked the question. "No," she answered herself, whispered to her blue-eyed reflection, "I'm no superhero."

"Did you say something?" Loki asked. He was in the driver's seat, fiddling with the radio while they waited for the light at the intersection of North and South Dakota to turn green. He believed that his powers worked. He believed that she was under his control.

"I said I know about the superheroes." Natasha batted her eyes innocently. "I can tell you everything that Agent Barton couldn't."

Loki sighed a home-sweet-home sigh. "Excellent, Agent Romanoff. But, first, tell me what Fury did with the Chitauri’s weapons."

\---------

Try not to panic, Sir, JARVIS said with infuriating coolness. When you panic you tend to take short breaths which decreases the oxygen flow to—

"JARVIS," Tony shouted at the AI, "help me find the auto pilot!"

Iron Man hardly looked invincible wringing his fingers over the helicopter's control panel. Coulson's plan worked. The gas took out the soldiers and the other Avengers, and Tony was left flying the helicopter, which meant that JARVIS was their only real chance of survival. Arrows and blinking lights overlaid his view of the control panel through the suit's HUD. JARVIS numbered the steps, color-coded them and then talked Tony through it.

Sir, I recommend that we change direction immediately to avoid the airspace around Cheyenne Mountain.

"No shit!" Tony growled. He turned the craft north and flipped a switch to keep them from going in any other direction. "Now what?"

Activate the emergency landing sequence, Sir. Colored arrows pointed at an image of a landing gear.

They half-crashed through a brown tree line and smashed into the underbelly of a tall cliff. The copter's gears and wheels squeaked and sparked. The propeller hiccupped once, twice, and then went still and quiet. A minute later disinterested birds in the woods continued their chirps and coos. Stark leaned back in the pilot's seat and groaned.

Sir, your vital signs have improved since the blast of gamma radiation, but I suggest you avoid additional stress while you continue to recover.

"Mute!" Tony bellowed. JARVIS went silent and Tony was left alone. Stars filled his vision. Darkness inched in from the corners of his eyes. One step towards the cargo hold was immediately followed by his collapsing knees. "Cap…" he mumbled. Crawling through and around the unconscious men tossed about during the crash, Tony managed to find Captain America and roll him onto his back. "Wakey, wakey, lazybones," he slurred. Tony patted Steve's cheek – then punched it.

Steve woke up swinging, but Tony managed to dodge his fists. "What happened?" he whispered, looking around at the piles of unconscious soldiers. "Stark, what—"

"Crashed—" Tony spat. "Coulson's plan… Banner…" While Steve struggled to sit up, Tony continued crawling. Bruce was sandwiched between Thor and the hammer. It took the dizzy and increasingly weak Tony several tries to pull the unconscious god off of the doctor. The jostling woke Thor up but he rolled over as if to go back to sleep. He would have if Steve hadn't gotten to his feet and pulled Thor to his.

"No smash," Tony begged when Bruce's eyes opened four or five punches later. "Get up." A few more feet of crawling and Tony uncovered Coulson.

"Is Clint really dead?" Phil whispered when he regained consciousness.

"Asgard. He's on Asgard," Stark explained. "He's ok."

"Good," Phil whispered. "Thank God." His eyes rolled back into his head and he passed out again.

\---------

Maria Hill was supposed to be on vacation. She left the moment Phil Coulson's funeral ended. So it was quite a shock when her flight landed in Mexico right beside an F-22 branded with the SHIELD insignia. The even bigger shock was when she entered the plane and found Nick Fury. Only Nick Fury. No other pilot, no crew, no agents, no soldiers.

"Hill," he said, bypassing any civil greeting, "answer me this: are you with me or with the Council?"

Maria became very aware that she was wearing flip flops and short shorts. "I work for S.H.I.E.L.D, sir."

A single blink from a single dark eye. "I'll ask again, Hill. Me or the Council?"

"Is this a trick question?"

No blink.

"You, sir," she said. "You."

He took her hand and shook it. "Then welcome to level 10."

She hesitated. "I'm level 8, sir. Don't I have to be 9 before I'm 10?"

"Phil Coulson is alive."

A ton of bricks. That was the feeling. Hill dropped her suitcase and clutched her tank top. "Oh, my god… Oh thank God."

"No vacation for you, Hill." A rare smile from Fury. "Suit up. We have work to do."

\---------

Like an intoxicated puppy trying to get out of an itchy Halloween costume. That's what the very ill Tony Stark looked like trying to take off the Iron Man suit. Banner whispered the observation to Steve, who was cuffing an unconscious Coulson with zip ties. "People put costumes on their pets?" Steve asked, dumbfounded. "That's – that's a thing?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Bruce sighed. He stepped over Coulson and walked across the cargo hold to Stark. "Norse gods are real, aliens are real, and dogs wear Halloween costumes."

"I saw a Doberman in an Iron Man suit once," Tony said with a slight slur to his words as Bruce helped him lift the chest armor up and over his head. "Iron Dog – ha." He swayed dizzily before righting himself.

Goosebumps prickled down Bruce's neck. "Your fever's back. You need another dose of radiation. Not too much, though. Don't want you to turn green."

Tony started to sweat as he peeled off his leg armor with shaking hands. "Thought I'd be dead by now. Should've been dead by now. Would've been if not for Loki's damn scepter. Instead of being dead I just feel dead."

Cap marched over, trying not to look panicked. "Stark, you're bleeding," he said. Gloved fingers pointed at the newly returned lesions on Tony's arms.

"So are you. So is Banner."

Bruce fingered a bump on the back of his head. "Damn hammer hit me when the helicopter crashed."

"Blame Coulson." The three men looked down at their recently resurrected comrade.

"Are you sure we can trust him?" Cap wondered.

Tony leaned against the wall and only fussed once when Banner knelt and helped him remove his boots. "Not with those nano-cells in his noggin. I have an idea, though. I know someone who might be able to help – might be able to hack the nano-tech." Tony wiped the sweat off his forehead. "Don't have any water, do we?"

Steve started rooting through the copter's emergency supplies. "Wouldn't it be easier to have Thor take him to Asgard like Barton? You should go, too, Tony."

Stark didn't seem to hear his fellow Avenger. "Mary… May… May-a. Right," he muttered. "Maya Hansen. If anybody can recode Coulson's brain, it's her."

Steve unscrewed the plastic cap off a half-gallon of water and handed it to Tony. It was too heavy, apparently. Tony's knees buckled. Water splashed onto Banner's head. Bruce stood. Steve dropped. They met in the middle and wrapped their arms protectively around Tony. "Crap," Stark whispered. His skin whitened another shade. As Steve steadied him and Banner helped him sit, Tony's head landed in the gap between Bruce's shoulder and neck, and stayed. Cap and Bruce exchanged wide-eyed, helpless looks. They waited, impatiently, for Tony to catch his breath.

Five minutes passed. Then, with no comment on what just happened, Stark continued. "Dr. Hansen knows how to access the brain's repair center. If we can get Coulson to her…"

Steve straightened. "What about Agent Rom—"

Bells suddenly chimed from Bruce's pocket. "Speak of the devil," he muttered after fumbling with his S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued cell phone. "It's a text from Romanoff."

"What did she say?" Stark asked.

Steve peered over Bruce's shoulder. "If Loki catches her contacting us…"

Bruce cut them off. "She says that Loki's scepter didn't work on her. He only thinks he has her under control… He's after the Chitauri tech, he'll go where she tells him so we can set a trap, just let her know the place and time."

Cap exhaled. It was the first good news in days. "We can ambush Loki."

"What about Loki?" said a voice from the helicopter door. The three men looked up to see Thor standing in the doorframe with his hammer over his shoulder.

"You moved the crew?" Tony asked.

The god of thunder nodded. "I took them to California, I think. Might have been Canada. Started with a 'C.'"

"Swell." Tony folded his arms against his chest. His head still rested against Bruce's shoulder. He wasted no effort moving it. He updated Thor, briefly, then thought aloud to the others, "We could kill two birds with one stone if we play our cards right, boys."

"How so?" asked Bruce.

"What birds?" said Thor.

Tony continued. "I know of a lab outside of Minneapolis. Maya could fly in and meet us there, we break in…" Tony pinched his shirt and fanned it. "Damn hot in here… We take Coulson. Maya cures him while we prep for Loki."

Bruce's shoulder started to ache from Tony's weight, but he didn't mention it. "Why Minneapolis?" he asked.

"Chitauri tech. That's where S.H.I.E.L.D. moved some of the weapons."

"It'll be three birds with one stone," said Bruce. "When we get the scepter back we'll hook it up to you again. More chemotherapy."

"Four birds." Tony's nostrils flared. "We save Romanoff." He winced and massaged the bridge of his nose. Bruce tightened the grip he had around Tony's shoulders as more weight sagged against him. "Guess I better call Maya before I pass out again," Tony whispered. "At least I remember this chick's name."

\---------

Fuzzy black and red silhouettes hovered around him like ghosts. Hawkeye blinked, and sweat rolled off his lashes and into his eyes. "Natasha?" he whispered.

"Clint Barton," a female voice whispered, soft as dandelion seeds fluttering across his skin. "You are in Asgard and we are healing you. Stay strong, warrior."

A white nose and pink cheeks. Clint squinted and saw dark brown eyes and red lips and gold barrettes. "Am I naked?" he slurred.

The Asgard woman's eyes flitted across his body. She tried and failed to suppress a smile. "Rest," she said.

Clint swallowed the air in his throat. "M-my friends…?" His eyelids fell like heavy drapes.

"Rest."

\---------

Maya Hanson wasn't sure what she expected to see when she pulled into the lab's parking lot, but it wasn't complete darkness, complete silence. Tony Stark was a circus. Lights and crowds followed him wherever he went. As she shut her car door behind her and pulled her jacket tight, Maya came to two conclusions: either Tony Stark had played an epic joke on her, or the man she'd spoken on the phone with at 4am wasn't really him.

"Ms. Hanson?" a voice called. Maya gasped, clutched her chest. A light flickered on over a door in the side wall and a figure emerged. "Ms. Hanson, I'm—"

"I recognize you," Maya said. She stepped into the circle of light, her heels splashing through a shallow puddle of rain, and took a good look at the blond, broad-shouldered man. "I thought you'd be taller."

Steve Rogers allowed a grim smile. "Thank you for coming. We really need your help."

Maya thanked God for the semi-darkness. Looking at his cheekbones made her blush from her collarbone to her ears. "I – I'll do what I can but like I told Tony I can't guarantee that—"

"We have 24 hours. Do what you can in 24 hours."

"Wait, what? What happens in 24 hours?"

Steve's voice was calm, like he was talking about the weather. "That's when Loki will get here."

"Captain?" a voice thundered from inside. A giant joined them, and Maya recognized Thor. "Phillip Coulson is awake. He is asking for you."

The muscles beneath Cap's cheeks flexed. "Sit with him for a minute, will you? I'll take Maya to Tony."

"I thought this Coulson guy is who I'm here to help?" Maya followed the two Avengers down a damp hallway.

"Coulson is your first patient, Doctor." Steve marched faster and Maya had to jog to keep up. "Stark is your other one."

\---------

Banner held a thermometer over Tony's nose. "Open up," he said.

Tony swatted at the instrument but barely jarred it from Bruce's hand. "You know I have a fever," he mumbled, "does it really matter how high? Stop mothering me, Banner."

Bruce's nostrils flared. "Tony, this thermometer is going inside you even if the Hulk has to do it. Now it can either go in your mouth or in your—"

"All right!" Tony stuck out his tongue and allowed Banner to slide the thermometer under it. He glared at his friend and tried to say some four-letter words.

Bruce cupped his hand behind his ear. "What's that? Sorry, I couldn't understand."

Tony's eyes flashed. He tried to speak again but only managed a few grunts.

"Aww, that's so sweet. I love you, too." Bruce grinned at the fury in Tony's red face. Tony slowly raised a finger – his middle one. Then his arm collapsed and he groaned in pain.

Beep – BEEP

Bruce glanced at the heart monitor attached to Stark. "Tony," he said, his voice gentle. "Calm down. Deep breath. The pain will pass." Tony nodded but his heart rate didn't slow. "Hey, hey." Bruce leaned over and grasped Tony's hand. "I won't let you die. I won't. We're cutting the wires, remember? No lying down on them, no crawling over anybody, snip snip." Bruce mimed scissors with his fingers. Tony nodded by slowly closing and reopening his eyes. A few seconds later Stark's heartbeat returned to normal.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. facility was half medical laboratory, half armory. Bruce suspected that it was only a laboratory before the Chitauri invaded. Crates of guns, boxes of charred armor, and trucks of dismantled wreckage littered the place. The first thing Bruce did when they arrived was find steel medical tables for the unconscious Coulson and the semi-conscious Stark. Luckily the trip to Minneapolis was uneventful. They'd texted with Romanoff, who was sure she could lead Loki into their trap. All they had to do was fix Coulson's brain, cure Stark's stubborn radiation poisoning and get the alien weapons operational all in 24 hours.

No sweat…

Banner's back was turned, and he was up to his elbows digging out supplies from abandoned med kits when he heard the hollow tinkle of glass hitting cement. He turned in time to see the thermometer bounce once more before it broke. Stark lay limp on the table, eyes and lips barely parted, chest barely rising and falling. He tried to speak, but if he didn't have the strength to keep a thermometer in his mouth then he certainly didn't have it to talk, either.

"Tony?" Bruce rushed over and cupped his friend's gray cheeks. "Hey, what – shit!" Blood slowly dripped from Tony's nostril. The self-inflicted chemotherapy he'd given himself back in Colorado had officially worn off. "God, no," Bruce gasped. He grabbed a roll of gauze, dropped it, then pressed the whole package against a bleeding lesion on Tony's bare chest.

A woman spoke from the hall behind Banner. "…which is why concentrated electromagnetic pulses to each nano-cell should disrupt the technology without affecting Coulson's—"

Banner's voice broke. "H-help!"

Footsteps. Steve and a woman Bruce presumed was Maya Hanson rushed over to the table. "Oh my god," Maya gasped at the sight of Tony. "What – what happened to him?"

"Radiation poisoning. Can you fix him?" Bruce bellowed.

"What? I'm not that kind of doctor!" Maya wrung her hands and stepped back from the table. "I work with plants and brains and I don't know anything about—"

"Sssss…" The hiss between Tony's breaths narrowly went unnoticed. He swallowed and licked his gray lips. "Ex…"

Steve knelt on the floor and looked Tony in the eye. "Stark?"

Tony winced, then took a deep breath. Steve leaned in close and Tony whispered in his ear. "What did he say?" Bruce asked.

"I think…" Steve shook his head. "I think he said "extreme is" or "extremities…? Does that mean anything to you?" he asked Maya.

Maya went statue-still. "You remember? You remember my research?" She joined Steve on the floor and stared into Tony's eyes, looking for lies. "I – I was planning on contacting you soon. I'm so close to perfecting it but I don't think I can without your help."

"What? Perfect what?" Bruce growled.

"Easy, Banner." Steve held his hand up, palm up. "What are you talking about?" he asked Maya.

Dr. Hanson took a deep breath. "Extremis," she said. "I call it Extremis."

\---------

"Steve, I can't get you another day," Natasha Romanoff whispered into her cell phone. "It's a miracle I've stalled him this long. He's coming after those weapons tomorrow!" The Black Widow felt Loki's eyes on her. He waited in the SUV just outside the hotel while Natasha checked them in for the night. She'd dialed Rogers the second the desk clerk got out of earshot.

Steve's sigh rattled through the connection. "Darn it."

"Didn't Dr. Hanson meet up with you?"

"Yes, but Tony underestimated how long these procedures would take. She and Banner rigged up some sort of EMP thingamajig for Coulson and he's responding to it. But Tony – I can't even describe what's happening to him. She said this Extremis thing would heal him, hack his brain or his nerves or – I don't know. I can't pretend to understand what's going on. It looks like he's burning, though."

Natasha stood up straighter. "What?"

"I can't explain it. I really can't. All I know is the Doc is worried about some side effect. You can't lead Loki here yet. Thor just now started trying to get the Chitauri weapons operational."

The slim, blonde hotel clerk returned with a pair of keycards. "Wow," she said to Natasha, "your eyes are so blue! Are those contacts?"

Natasha summoned her sweetest Stepford Wife smile. "Malfunctioning alien mind control," she said. While the clerk struggled to pick her jaw up off the floor, Natasha returned her attention to Steve. "You have to move Stark somewhere safe."

The line went quiet for a whole minute. Natasha assumed that Steve was discussing the plan with Maya. "Not an option," he reported. "We can't move him because of kinetic, um, overheating – uh – look, we have to stay here. Lead Loki on a wilder goose chase, Romanoff. Give us more time."

"If I change the location or the time he'll suspect that I'm planning something." Natasha rubbed her eyelids and counted down from ten while exhaling slowly. "Ok. I'll do what I can to slow him down."

"What are you going to do? Natasha! Don't do anything that will get yourself kill—"

Natasha pressed her thumb against the red End Call button so hard that she half-expected the phone to break in half. Dozens of scenarios raced through her mind and not for the first time that hour she wished that Clint Barton was at her side. His ability to see both targets and problems from every angle was one of the many things that made him an exceptional agent. He knew how to sense solutions with more than his eyes. He knew when to be a sniper and when to be a battering ram.

"Sniper or battering ram?" Natasha whispered to herself.

"I prefer battering rams," said an amused baritone voice behind her. Natasha pocketed her cell phone and turned to face Loki. "Well, I prefer to recruit battering rams," the god of mischief sneered. He leaned against a white column in the lobby, arms folded against his chest, ankles crossed. "Barton was a good battering ram," he said. Waves of heat turned Natasha's face redder than she wanted. "You, Agent Romanoff, are neither. What you are is a fool."

"You knew I wasn't under your spell," Natasha realized. "You made me lead you to the weapons. This whole time I thought I-"

"Thought you were, what, special? Strong? Magically impervious to this?" Loki took his staff out from behind his back and twirled it in the air. "The best way to defeat an enemy is to make that enemy think he's going to win."

"We did win," Natasha reminded him. "We will win again."

"What you'll be, Agent, is dead. But only after I see the utter guilt in your eyes when you realize that, thanks to your careful planning, I'm going to extinguish the Avengers in – what's the phrase you people use? One fell swoop?"

"Battering ram it is." Natasha bent her knees and clenched her fists, imagined Loki crumpling under her punches, and attacked.

\---------

Orange light flickered off of Maya's face. She backed away with her hands raised as if in surrender. "I was afraid of this," she said. "This is exactly what I was afraid of. We need to evacuate."

Tony Stark's skin cells switched back and forth between molten lava and solid black rock. The whole armory glowed from the light burning inside him. Steve and Bruce stood beside the table and watched helplessly as Tony seized in pain.

"What do you mean, evacuate?" Banner demanded.

Maya scratched her fingernails down her red cheeks. "We need to get at least a block away from him. Anyone in this building will be incinerated."

Steve turned away from Tony and fixed a stony, expressionless glare on Maya. "An explosion? This is the side effect? Tony knew this could happen?" She nodded. "How – why – fix him!" Steve grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her back towards Tony. "Fix him!"

"I c-can't." Maya shook her head a half dozen times. "I've done all I can. There comes a point where it's basically up to his body. It has to adjust, it has to regulate. His body will either accept Extremis or give up. He has to will himself not to explode."

Steve pursed his lips and looked down at Tony. "Hear that, Stark? Don't give up. Don't let your body give up."

"How?" Tony groaned.

Maya held her hands out, palms up. "That's the problem. That's the hiccup."

"You call this a hiccup?" Steve shouted. "Tony Stark is going to explode and that's a HICCUP?"

Tony suddenly cried out. His back arched up so high that only his toes and neck suspended him. He collapsed, seized, then said, "I can't – the radiation poisoning weakened me - I can't do it, I can't control it. The suit. Get the suit."

Steve and Bruce returned to his side immediately. The heat rolling off of his body stung their eyes. "Suit," Tony repeated. He pointed at the Iron Man armor propped up against the wall. "Contain… explosion…"

"Tony," Maya gulped, "we're talking about Human Torch heat. At best the suit might shorten the blast radius by thirty yards. And you'll still die."

"I know." Tony looked desperately at his friends. "Houses near here. Civilians. All the alien tech in here… explosion will be bigger. Put me in the suit!"

Steve and Bruce exchanged looks and, without a word, sprinted over to the armor and dragged it to the table. They opened it and set it on the floor beside Tony. In a quick motion and unfortunately without oven mitts, the two Avengers slid Tony off of the table and into the armor. The suit wrapped around every inch of him but the face plate stayed up. Colored blobs of light danced in each of their eyes when the fire-light disappeared beneath metal.

"Leave." Tony winced. His voice broke, and remained broken. "I can't – I can't hold it back any longer. It'll kill you all!"

"Miss Hanson there must be something we can do!" Captain America pleaded.

"I'm sorry," Maya sobbed, "I'm so sorry."

"Cap, get her out of here," Banner whispered. "Grab Thor and Coulson and get as far away from here as you can."

Steve was taken aback by the shallow tears in Banner's eyes. "What, you're – you're staying? Dr. Banner—"

"I'm staying." Banner's chin quivered. "Nothing can kill the Hulk, Cap, and I…" Bruce took a deep breath, then whispered, "He doesn't have to die alone."

Steve started to protest but Tony's shriek interrupted. "Go!" Stark begged. "GO!" A new scent filled the air. Extremis was melting the suit.

Steve grabbed Maya and pushed her out the door and down the hallway. Bruce watched them leave until long after they were gone. Trembling fingers clenched into fists. Bruce wiped his sleeve across his eyes, summoned his bravest face and sat, Indian-style, at Tony's side. "So," he said with phony cheerfulness, "want to play twenty questions?"

Tony cocked his chin at the door. "Get outta here, Banner."

Bruce shook his head. "No."

"Do you realize how big of a ka-boom I'm about to make?"

"I can survive anything."

"You'll wish you were dead. The blast will peel every green skin cell—"

"I don't care. I don't give a single damn, Tony." Bruce grasped Stark's armored hand and held on, even when his skin started to burn. "I'm not leaving you to die alone."

Tony shivered like an icy wind just went down his shirt. "I had this plan, this vision," he whispered, "of all of us fighting bad guys together for the rest of our lives. We'd live together, fight crime by day and play poker at night… You were going to have your own room in the tower."

"The Stark Tower?"

"Avengers." Tony squeezed Bruce's hand. "The Avengers Tower."

Bruce pictured himself living in New York City with Tony, Steve, Thor, Natasha and Hawkeye. It was an impossible future that somehow felt like home.

Bruce Banner couldn't remember the last time he felt at home.

"Mello jazz in my room?" he asked Tony. "Bongo drums?"

"And a huge bag of weed." Tony grinned. The flames were behind his eyes, too. "Candyland."

\---------

Phil Coulson did a slow sit up and waited for the inevitable headache. When it didn't come he carefully plucked the electrodes off of his scalp and forehead. "You look better," Thor diagnosed from where he stood leaning against the doorframe. "At least you're not sweating as much."

Phil rolled his sleeves down and buttoned the cuffs. "I didn't expect it to work," he admitted. "I wonder if we can use Dr. Hanson's EMP generator on the other agents that the Council brainwashed."

The Asgardian shook his head. "Brain – wash – ed," he said. "Peculiar language you people have."

Phil stood up and put his suit jacket back on. "Peculiar clothes you people have," he said with a playful smirk. Thor glanced down at his robes and returned the smile.

"Thor!" a voice bellowed. Maya and Steve appeared in the hallway. "Out," Rogers said, his face and voice iron. "Evacuate now!"

"What's going on?" Phil asked as he jogged out to meet them. "Captain—?"

"There's going to be an explosion any second," Maya explained.

Thor slowed down. "Stark? Banner?"

"Get in the car," Steve snapped. "Get…" Captain America slid to a stop, his boots squeaking on the cement. Suddenly he grabbed Maya's forearms and pulled her face-to-face. "You said it's down to will. He's weak, his body's failing, but Tony can will himself to live – that's what you said, right?" Maya nodded her head. The movement loosened the tears in her eyes and they fluttered down her cheeks. "Thor, get them to safety."

Without explanation, Steve pivoted and ran back inside.

If he'd stayed for even ten seconds longer he might have seen the shadow rise from behind the SUV and raise a weapon.

\---------

In an invisible Quinjet a thousand feet above Milwaukee, Nick Fury and Maria Hill stared at a jumble of symbols that they couldn't make heads or tails (or elbows or horns) of. "The hell…" Fury muttered for the eighth time. "How many S.H.I.E.L.D. agents have access to this particular folder, Hill?"

Maria used her fingers to count, and the count didn't go any higher than ten. "Eleven if you count Stark," she said. "These days I just assume he has access to everything." The proverbial light bulb went off in her head. "Wait… this is Stark's – this is Stark's!"

"What? His code?"

"Not Tony, his father! This is one of the first encryptions S.H.I.E.L.D. ever used. Howard Stark invented it." Maria leaned forward until her nose almost touched the screen. "I took S.H.I.E.L.D. history 101 my first semester at the Academy. God, it's been so long…"

Fury pointed at the non-existent watch on his left wrist. "Tick tock, Hill. We have to find the Avengers before the Council does."

Maria's lips moved silently as she interpreted the symbols. "It's a mayday signal. There are map coordinates, something about Loki and… The message is from White Wife. Who the hell is—?"

Fury's white teeth flashed. "What's the opposite of "white" and "wife," Hill?"  
Simultaneously they said, "Black Widow."

\---------

As a man, Bruce Banner was a genius. As the Hulk, he was strength. All of that intelligence and all of that power and all he could do was watch helplessly, hopelessly, as Tony Stark writhed in pain from the Extremis fires burning him from the inside out. When Tony screamed Bruce did, too. He had to be strong for his friend but the grief he felt also had to come out.

"Tell Pepper – tell Pepper she's the only woman I ever loved." When Tony spoke, smoke smoldered out of his throat. "Tell Maya 'thank you' for trying."

"Shhh," Bruce soothed. A tear slid off his chin and immediately evaporated from the heat rolling out of Stark. "That vision you have – Avengers living and fighting together – I swear, Tony, I swear I'll make that a reality. And every time we assemble we'll think of you."

Tony opened his mouth to respond but footsteps caught both of their attentions. Steve barreled into the room and slid the last few feet to Tony's side on his knees. Both Banner and Tony started shouting at him at the same time but Steve's voice carried higher and louder than theirs. "Listen to me – listen to me!" Sweat immediately accumulated on his forehead and he had to wipe it away before it reached his eyes. "Dammit, Tony Stark, you listen to me right now! I have two things to say. First, I am not leaving. Second, if you explode you will kill me. Do you understand?"

"Cap, have you lost your mind?"

"If you explode, I will die," Steve repeated. "I'll die, Tony."

"Yes, you will!" The flames that were Tony started to turn white. "Banner – get him the hell out of here!"

Bruce was pale. His fingers twitched as he looked back and forth between Steve and Tony. "This is a big risk, Cap," he whispered.

"Bruce!" Tony sobbed.

"Look at me – hey! Hey!" Steve leaned in as close to Tony as he dared. The Iron Man armor was almost molten lava. "You got this. You can will yourself to live, Tony. You just need a little extra motivation."

"Please," Tony begged. "I-I can't."

"You can. If you explode, Tony, you'll kill me. Do you want me to die?"

"No. No!"

"Then LIVE."

Bruce sensed it coming before any of them did. Instantly he unleashed the Hulk, who covered Steve with his body the split second that Tony erupted like a star.

\---------

When Tony was six years old, his nanny taught him how to blow a bubble. He learned to flatten the gum against the roof of his mouth, shift it forward and wrap it around his tongue, then exhale into it. He blew and blew until the pink bubble blocked out his nanny's face. "Don't pop it, don't you pop that bubble, Anthony," she told him, so he inhaled – hard. The bubble shrunk to the size of a bullet and rammed into the back of his mouth. It went down his throat, but only halfway, and he started to choke. His nanny shrieked, punched him in the stomach a half dozen times, and then went running out of the room shouting for help. A minute passed as long as a lifetime. Tony collapsed to his knees. No matter how hard he heaved every muscle in his torso he couldn't spit the gum out.

So, with his last conscious thoughts, he swallowed it.

Years later Extremis was in his throat.

He lay on the floor staring up at Bruce and Steve's terrified faces as the fires threatened to burst out. And suddenly – in the split of a split second – he remembered that gum.

And he swallowed.

Tony willed every cell in his heart mind and soul to swallow the flames. The fire imploded white-hot and unbearable and everything melted together – his skin into his armor, his armor into his bones. For a moment Tony Stark was fire itself. And then the heat in his cells was snuffed out and replaced by Iron Man. The suit shrunk into the hollow marrow of his bones and the fire combined with the arc energy to power it.

Tony brought his hand up to his face. He was not only whole, but unharmed. His skin wasn't tan, let alone blistered. The forest fire in his skin cooled down to a manageable fever. Not a hair on his body was singed. Two faces hovered over him and he recognized Captain America and the Hulk, saw them half with his eyes and half with JARVIS'. He felt Iron Man like an aura.

A single loud bellow of a belly laugh and then Tony said, "Son of a bitch."

\---------

Steve Rogers owed Nick Fury another ten bucks and then some. He vowed to never use the phrase "nothing would surprise me" ever again. One moment his friend was enveloped in heat and the Hulk was wrapped around him as tight as a cocoon, and then there was regular old Tony Stark lying naked on the floor and staring, bewildered, at his own hand.

"Son of a bitch," Stark said.

"Tony?" Steve crawled out from under the Hulk's arm and approached him warily. "Stark, you're – you're alive?"

Tony held his arms out like a toddler for his mother. "Help me up."

Hulk slid his thick green fingers under Tony's back and lifted him up to his feet. "Tone-y," he growled happily. "Better – all better?"

"I don't understand." Steve rubbed his eyes and massaged his temples. "I thought… God, Tony, you were a goner. What did Extremis do to you?"

"I think – stand back," Tony told them, "I think it did… this." In a fluid bird-like movement, Tony stretched out his arms like they were wings. The Iron Man suit bloomed out of his bones faster than any eye could see. One moment he was naked and the next he was covered head to toe in red and gold armor. "If I had to choose a side effect," Stark said, and Hulk and Steve could hear his smile behind the golden face plate, "I'd choose this!"

A scream from the hallway.

Thor, his hammer falling out of his grip, sailed into the room and over the Avengers' heads. He crashed through two trucks stocked with Chitauri weapons, broke three alien crafts and, finally, landed in an unconscious heap against the far wall. A second body landed beside him: Maya Hanson, dead.

Tony, Steve and the Hulk slowly turned to face the figure marching towards them.

Loki had his staff in one hand and his other hand wrapped around Phil Coulson's neck. "You know," he said as he shook Phil at them, "I could've sworn I killed this one!"

\---------

Phil wondered how many people could say that they were murdered by the same man twice. He wanted to sigh at the thought of his inevitable death, but that would require breathing, and Loki's grip around his neck wasn't letting up. At least the first time he died he got to have last words, a last heroic act. Now he was helpless against Loki's strength.

Loki rotated his shoulders. His grin widened and he spoke with a purr. "You know, this planet was supposed to be the ultimate toy. Do you know what children do when they can't have the toy they want?" he asked the room.

Stars appeared on the blurred edges of his blackening vision. Phil was focusing on blinking them away when movement caught his attention. He squinted, and rotated his head a few inches so that he could see clearly between Loki's golden antlers. A figure in black and maroon crouched in the rafters. A figure with a black bow and arrows.

CLINT…?

"They destroy that toy," Loki said. He aimed his scepter at Tony.

Barton pressed his forefinger against his lips to say "shhh." And then he mouthed numbers: One… Two… Three!

Phil knew what to do. On the count of three he yanked down on Loki's arm as hard as he could.

\---------

The Asgardians who cured Clint also gave him ten golden arrows. "Use them wisely," they told him. "The heads are laced with a special mistletoe that will kill any mortal. All twelve should kill Loki, but just one could kill you."

Once Phil added his full weight to Loki's arm, Barton unleashed two arrows at the same time. Loki roared as one pierced his right arm and the other embedded into his thigh. He tossed Coulson against the wall and fired his scepter. Clint was already on the move. He pounced onto another rafter with only the heat of the blast on his tail. Another pair of arrows rained down on the god but only one hit the target. The second arrow ricocheted off of Loki's armor and sped towards Steve's nose. Captain America raised his shield but didn't have to. Iron Man caught the arrow in midair and threw it back. Loki started to resemble a pincushion with four arrows in his body.

Barton landed on the cement floor beside the Hulk. "Good bird," the Hulk greeted. He gently patted Clint on the head.

"Cover me!" Clint shouted at the others. "I have to get six more arrows in him!" Nobody questioned him.

"Welcome back, Legolas," Tony said. He sprinted at Loki from the left while Steve took the right and the Hulk the center. Clint notched another arrow and fired.

\---------

"There!" Natasha leaned between Fury and Hill and pointed at a flashing light on the console. "That's the facility I sent them to. See that energy spike? That must be the Tesseract."

"Dammit, Romanoff," Furry growled. "You have at least three broken ribs! Would you sit your ass down and let us handle this?"

"Oh boy," Maria said before Natasha could reply. "We're in the right place all right. Look."

The three agents stared through the Quinjet’s windshield at the scene below. The building was Swiss cheese. Energy blasts burst from the inside out and walls were starting to crumble. The northwest corner was on fire. They spotted the familiar form of Phil Coulson, who appeared to be dragging an unconscious Thor away from the building. Captain America's shield flew through a broken window and skewered a Chevy in the parking lot. A second later a red and gold blur that had to be Iron Man sailed straight through the roof and almost hit the invisible Quinjet on its descent.

"I'm landing," Fury announced. "Suit up, Hill. Romanoff, you stay in the jet."

\---------

Steve yanked a golden arrow out of his stomach and felt his blood waterfall down his suit. He groaned and fought the wobble in his knees. The Avengers had managed to get seven arrows into Loki. One arrow was still in Barton's sheath, the second in Steve's blood-soaked hand and the third – in the excitement of the battle Steve had lost track of the third one.

A glimmer of gold caught his eye but it was just Tony. Loki had Iron Man in a backwards bear hug. He lifted him like a spear and launched him out of sight. Steve couldn't see Barton or anyone else – nothing else but the dust and crumbling bricks starting to rain down. The structure could only handle so many superheroes slamming against it at once.

A glimmer of silver. Steve spotted Thor's hammer and ran to it. He remembered that no man could wield it but Thor AFTER it was raised above his head to block the debris. "The heck?" Rogers wondered to himself. He stared, shocked, at the weapon in his hand. The hesitation nearly cost him his head when a rafter crashed down. Steve rolled out of the way, taking the hammer with him. He burst outside and sprinted towards Coulson.

Thor was sitting up and rubbing his head. At the sight of Captain America holding his hammer he rubbed his eyes as if trying to rub away a hallucination. Phil stood to meet him. "Captain? Did you get hit?"

Steve wrapped his arm around his stomach wound and ignored the question. "We have to get this back to Barton," he said, showing the others the golden arrow.

Thor stood and stared at the arrow. "Did that pierce you?"

"I've taken worse hits," Steve grunted. "This is yours."

Thor took his hammer back, and the arrow. "Captain, I suggest that you rest before—"

It was then that the fires reached the Chitauri weapons and the building exploded.

\---------

When the facility exploded, there was nothing Clint could do but wrap his body around the one golden arrow he still possessed. He heard the roar of the explosion, felt the sandstorm-like wind whip him off of his feet. Ash replaced oxygen, debris blocked all of the dawn's light. Barton sealed his eyes shut.

Another roar. Something wrapped around him as tightly as he was around the arrow. Clint peeked through one curtain of eyelashes and saw green. The Hulk pinned him to the ground and then spread all four of his limbs out wide to protect Clint. "Go!" Hulk barked. "Crawl!"

Clint rolled onto his stomach and stared at the space between the Hulk's column-like arms. Light. Just beyond the dust. The Hulk had created a tunnel for him. The entire building was falling down around them but the Hulk was Hawkeye's umbrella. Clint crawled on his elbows, gasping, one hand around the arrow and the other around his bow. Hulk groaned as bricks piled on top of him. His joints started to tremble and he roared at Clint to hurry.

Hawkeye obeyed. He got to safety, landing face down in the grass. The final wall crumbled, the last of the glass shattered. Clint coughed. The only fresh air was between the blades of grass under his nose. Barton took a breath and looked back over his shoulder just in time to see the last square inch of green disappear under the rubble.

\---------

Thor left Steve with Coulson and sprinted, hammer swinging, back towards the building. His brother's bottom half was wedged under a pile of red and cream bricks. Loki's fingers twitched, reaching for his staff which was just out of reach. Thor kicked it beyond his grasp, hesitated, then dropped his weapons and started pulling the bricks off three at a time.

Loki's dull eyes blinked up at him. "Brother," he wheezed. Thor's heart clenched like a fist. Even after everything, Thor still cared for him.

"I'll get you out, just hold still," Thor said. He scooped up bricks like a steam shovel and tossed them aside. "I'm coming, Lo—"

"Thor!" a voice shouted, a voice he recognized as Nick Fury's. "Behind you!"

The real Loki materialized over Thor's left shoulder with an arrow held over his head like a spear. His own blood dripped from the arrowheads, and from the seven wounds in his body. Loki screamed and plunged the arrow towards Thor's neck.

Maria Hill came out of nowhere. Her body was so slim that it barely slowed the arrow down. It pierced her chest and kept going through her spine to nick Thor's skin. Thor rolled out from under her, grabbed the eighth arrow and threw it so hard into Loki's stomach that he went flying backwards and out of sight. Thor pivoted again and caught Hill right before she hit the ground, but it was already too late.

"Thor," Maris gasped, her eyes open but unseeing. "Finish this." Thor opened his mouth to reply, but she was gone.

\---------

It took Tony an entire minute to figure out which way was up. He wasn't used to being a cyborg yet, so when he tried to flip his mask up he found himself just yanking on his own cheekbone. Dazed, he stumbled towards the rubble, nearly tripping over his own feet.

"Sir," said JARVIS in Tony's ear, "duck."

Stark obeyed, and just then Loki's body flew over him and bounced off of the Quinjet’s windshield. "Where'd that come from?" Tony wondered aloud.

"Director Fury arrived 49 seconds ago with—"

"Never mind!" Tony snapped.

"Stark!" Tony turned to see Barton sprinting over with one golden arrow notched in his bow. "The other arrow! Give me the other arrow!"

Tony held his empty hands up for Hawkeye to see. "I don't have it – I thought you had it?"

"I only have one! There have to be three more around here!"

"Two," a voice boomed. Thor emerged from a dust cloud with Fury beside him. "I embedded the eighth arrow in Loki moments ago."

"We have to find it." Clint gestured desperately at the collapsed building. "We have to – Loki will only be destroyed if we hit him with all ten!"

"I'll make you a deal!" a slithering voice called. Tony had heard that voice with that tone far too often to not know what he was about to see. The four men looked towards the Quinjet as Loki emerged from behind it with Natasha Romanoff in a headlock. "You let me go right now," Loki said, "let me live, and I'll only kill one of you."

"Dammit, Romanoff," Fury seethed, "I told you to stay in the jet!"

Natasha rolled her eyes and squeaked, "I just peeked outside!"

"God, not again," Clint gasped at the sight. He slowly lowered the bow and let the golden arrow fall uselessly to the ground. "Loki, take me instead." He took a step forward but Fury grabbed his elbow.

Loki swayed on his feet but he still had the strength of a god. "Déjà vu," he hissed at Natasha. "Here we are again. You're just a – what's that phrase you humans use? Damsel in distress?" Natasha squirmed in his grip. The red in her face had little to do with the restricted oxygen. Loki leaned his cheek against hers and whispered, almost seductively, "That's all you are. Just another damsel in distress."

Her muscles coiled tight. "I am the Black Widow," Natasha said. With a graceful swing she unsheathed the tenth golden arrow from behind her back and stabbed the head into Loki's exposed hand. The Asgardian screamed and released her, and Natasha scrambled to the side, hugging her broken ribs.

Tony turned to Thor. "Now!" he shouted.

Thor didn't hesitate. Not again. With a roar that vibrated the ground, the God of Thunder leapt into the air and tackled Loki, pinning him to the ground with his knee against his throat. Thor plunged the arrow down into the exact same spot that Loki stabbed Maria. This arrow also went clean through. Loki shuddered, exhaled with a jolt, and didn't inhale again.

Thor kept his face down. He didn't look at his brother, took extra care to avoid Loki's dead eyes as he stood and re-joined his friends. Clint had Natasha in his arms, her face buried against his neck. Fury's jaw clenched and his one eye stared at Loki like he wanted to memorize every detail of his death. To Thor's surprise it was Iron Man who put a hand on his shoulder and asked him if he was all right. Thor nodded. He started to turn back towards his brother but averted his eyes again just in time. "It's over," he said. "Finally. It's over."

As the final rubble settled and the dust started to dissipate in the air, an eerie silence settled over the Avengers. Tony broke that silence when he finally figured out how to melt the helmet back into his bones so that he could see his friends with his own eyes. "Where's Bruce?" he asked.

Clint's pale cheeks sunk. He rubbed Natasha's arm like it was a stress ball. He started to speak, then just let his gaze answer Tony's question when he stared behind him at the downed building. Every muscle in Tony's stomach contracted. "And where's—" he swallowed, tried to steady his voice. "Where's Steve?"

\----------

Tony Stark was no angel but at that moment, to Bruce, he looked like one.

It was the silhouette. The rising sun ringed Tony's body with soft light. It was also the way he held his hand out, palm up, to Bruce. Bruce watched, transfixed, as the red metal that was Tony Stark's hand disappeared into his pores. That woke him up, somehow. The human skin. Bruce looked down at his own hand, saw that it wasn't green, and reached out to grasp Tony's. Bricks shifted, other voices groaned as they levered walls off of him. A solid yank later and Bruce on his bare feet – just for a moment – before his knees gave out and he collapsed against Tony's chest.

"Easy." Tony's voice in his ear. "I gotcha. You're ok." The other Avengers jogged past them, saying words that Bruce didn't catch. Clint patted his shoulder and forced his fingers to fold around a pair of black pants. Bruce focused on lungful's of sweet dawn air, focused on regaining his footing. He was dizzy from a thousand clunks to his head but, otherwise, he was going to be all right.

"You get him?" Bruce mumbled. He held onto Tony's shoulders as the billionaire helped him put the pants on. "Loki?"

"Yeah," Tony said. "Thor did. We all did." He hesitated, then said, "Hill's dead. Maria Hill."

Bruce sighed and rubbed his eyes. "You ok? Everyone else?"

Tony's throat worked. "Come on," he urged. Stark pulled Banner's arm across his shoulders and together they walked over to the semi-circle of Avengers.

"Oh, no," Bruce whispered. Steve Rogers was on his back, on the grass, his head cradled in Coulson's lap. His eyes were closed and his skin was corpse-gray. Phil had bandaged the wound in his abdomen with his own shirt – a shirt that was black with poison instead of red with blood.

Tony handed Bruce off to Thor and knelt down. "Cap?" he whispered. Gently he rubbed Cap's sweaty blond hair off of his forehead. "Steve?" He looked around, eyes wide and wet. "What happened to him?"

"He got hit with one of the arrows," Coulson reported.

Clint paled. "The Asgardians said it would kill any mortal."

"Captain America isn't just any mortal," Fury pointed out.

Phil pressed his finger to Steve's neck. "His pulse is normal," he reported, "but his breathing…"

"I'll take him to Asgard," Thor said. "We should hurry."

Tony squeezed his hands under Steve's back and knees and stood up with the captain in his arms. "Can you take me, too?" Thor nodded.

"Take all of us," said Natasha. She glanced at Fury for permission. He nodded.

Steve stirred, then. It took super soldier strength to open his eyes. "Tony?" he whispered, barely loud enough for Stark to hear. "What's go… what's going on?"

Tony summoned a wink and a lopsided smile. "Just rest, Cap," he said. "We're cutting the wire."

Any other time, with anyone else, Steve would've at least demanded more information. But in Tony's arms he relaxed, and allowed himself to doze off.

\----------

Three Days Later

The banquet table was piled a foot high with food. The fruit was so fresh that they could smell the precise moment when it ripened. Some meat that smelled like beef but looked like pork was covered in a sweet sauce that tingled the nostrils. At the head of the table, King Odin stood and raised his glass. Everyone else followed suit: Thor, Natasha, Clint, Fury, Coulson, Bruce, Tony, and a completely healed and healthy Steve. "I just want to say that you are all invited to stay here for as long as you want," Odin said. "Any allies of my son are allies of mine."

"I thought you could all use a vacation," Thor said.

Eight pairs of eyes fixed on Nick Fury. The director shrugged and said, "It might be wise to avoid earth until all of our names are cleared. The moment Stark sets food in New York they'll arrest him. The moment I return to Headquarters they'll make me do paperwork. Ah, hell…" Fury raised his glass higher. "I'll stay under one condition: another pint of this mead."

Everyone chuckled. "To the Avengers," said Phil, making a toast.

"To cutting the wires," said Steve, looking at Tony.

Tony clinked his glass against Cap's, and then against Bruce's. "To friends."

**The End ******


End file.
